Ritual Sacrifice
by Mithrigil
Summary: How Seishirou took up smoking. Seishirou with Subaru, others. Spoilers for the full manga and tendencies toward X.


**Ritual Sacrifice**

**tokyo Babylon, x**

_Mithrigil Galtirglin_

* * *

**1987.01.28**

The world's supposed to end in the year of the Rabbit. Not this coming one, but the next.

Seishirou's more concerned about graduation, at the moment.

-

**1992.02.18**

"Tomorrow?" he says, raising his eyebrows and closing his eyes, once he's certain that the boy's taken on most of the teacup's weight.

"Yes," Subaru stammers, "I'm surprised Hokuto hasn't told you."

Of course the girl has. At length. Seishirou sits down and lies, as instructed, around a sip of tea. "She didn't mention anything. Do you have plans to return to Kyoto?"

"We did, but I have that contract with Kashiwagi-san, and we agreed on tomorrow…it really is the best day," Subaru apologizes, though what for, it doesn't matter. He smiles, rolls his thumbs against the palms of his gloves, maybe _almost_ looks Seishirou in the eyes but apparently something in the tea is more captivating. Too many leaves? "So Hokuto is going, but I'm staying here—"

"And you want me to keep you company?" Seishirou slides an elbow along the table, rests his hand on his knuckles, grins. "I'm honored."

"—No! I mean," it's not hard to fake affection when the boy blushes like that, "I mean, thank you, but I, er, you don't have to wait up for me or anything, I don't know how long it'll take to purify the site and I'll probably be gone all day anyway, so—but, I mean. Thank you."

"But then why did you mention it," Seishirou _insinuates,_ running his thumb along the teacup and glancing down at the gesture just so Subaru knows it's going on, "if you didn't want me to take it into account?"

Subaru does notice that. The shiver washes down him. Seishirou can hear the boy's muscles tensing, can feel the boy's halted, withheld breath.

"It's unfortunate," Seishirou keeps lying. "I have appointments through the day tomorrow as well. Otherwise I'd try to surprise you," but the best lies have a little truth in them, "whenever you did come home. There's no sense in spending your seventeenth birthday alone. If anything, it's cruel of Hokuto-chan to go back to Kyoto without you," never mind that she's doing no such thing and this is the girl's idea of an elaborate ploy.

Seishirou smiles more at that thought, 'an elaborate ploy', than at Subaru's waving, apologetic hands. Or perhaps it's the combination of the two. Those hands, after all, are _his._

-

**1989.07.23**

Concealing the blood that's still _on_ him is easy enough. Ascertaining that he's not leaving a trail is easy now, but wasn't always. Last year he started carrying a dry-cleaning bag to put his trenchcoat in. Thanks to that, sometimes he doesn't even have to cast an illusion around himself, can take the subway home like any other citizen.

Tonight isn't one of those nights, and he's not proud of it, but the weather, at least, is accommodating. Down to his pants, his boots, and an undershirt that he might be able to salvage by claiming to have cut himself shaving, Seishirou takes his usual sort of paths through the city, high and dark. It's unpleasantly humid and implying rain, but for now the sky is mostly clear and the only thing concealing the stars is the abundance of light. It's Saturday—Sunday, now—and still crowded, stories below him, in Shinjuku.

When he does get to the roof of his apartment complex, he still elects to take the fire escape down. He drops the illusion once he's taking off his shoes, bracing his back on the outside windowpane. He checks—no trail, but enough's leaked down the back of his shoes that he'll have to clean them as well. Once he's inside, he drops them in the sink, and his ruined shirt and socks in the incinerator. He really has to start wearing black socks. The suit jacket, it turns out, he can salvage if he starts soaking it now, so he does.

It might be a bit indulgent, he thinks, but he takes the trenchcoat into the shower with him, hangs it up where the water that misses him can hit it as well. He lets that run for a moment—not too hot to spoil the fabric—and steps in after it, still in his pants, his undershirt. He has the water shout into his face for a solid minute at least, closes his eyes and reconsiders the kill, learns from his miscalculations. Once all the water falls off him clear, he peels the clothing off and drapes it over the curtain rod. Yes. He can keep the suit after all.

-

**1982.01.16**

Making small talk to the effect of "I want to be a doctor" turns out to be harder than the exams. At least the first round. And even if it's true. A medical practice, as a front, would make things so much easier. Doctors can afford to reek of blood, he thinks, and after all, life is life, and any life suffices.

But it's hard, to chat up such a forthcoming, friendly girl and say things like "I don't know _how_ I want to help, but _that_ I do," with a pleasantly straight face. When she mentions she's gunning for the University of Agriculture and Technology as well, he remembers that a smaller school is no less of a risk, just a different one. He may convey the illusion of humility, of mediocrity, but it also forces intimacy in a way that comparatively cutthroat Tokyo University would not.

They lounge about outside the testing center. He mostly ignores her. There's a ledge around a cursory little garden and she's perched on it, tapping her heels on the carved concrete and waving away the smoke from down the sidewalk. Seishirou looks over at that cluster of people, so many of them stilling their nerves—presumably—talking around mouthfuls of smoke, all their hands still and their eyes slightly brighter, their knuckles ruddy. Can't smoke and wear gloves at the same time, he thinks.

"Tomorrow's the clincher," she's saying. "I mean, I studied for the biology exam the hardest but I always feel like something's missing. You know what I mean?"

"Of course," he says, consolingly. "I'm convinced the only real purpose of the exams is to shake my confidence."

-

**1985.05.13**

That cow has more blood than he thought it would.

-

**1991.01.02**

_Shigoto-hajime,_ first work of the New Year. In one aspect, it's Youda Akihiko, CFO, who made an especially appropriate first meal of the year for the Sakura. Retaining a long life from eating long noodles is just a superstition, after all.

In the other aspect, it's an ironically-named dog named Hitsugi, who didn't make it through surgery. Worms, Seishirou explained to the dog's human family. But it's a new year, don't let this dampen your festivities. Hitsugi's no longer in pain.

-

**1983.12.18**

Even over the pounding wind, he can hear the boy squeak. It's a lot of sounds, congealing into one. There's the faint sizzle as the child's skin definitely burns from underneath, and the throb of the marks on his other hand, cauterizing. There's the snap of his hair, and Seishirou's as well, tangling and smacking against the boy's skin. The creak of the air between his knuckles. The slosh of his heels (and Seishirou's knee) in the grass. The ragged gulp of his breath, _ambivalent,_ and that's almost…a consolation. If the boy's own body can't decide whether it's about to preserve itself or not, it almost justifies that Seishirou hasn't decided either.

He kisses down harder, feels the boy's skin chap and curl. He'll have exemplary hands when—if—he grows up, long-fingered and gentle.

-

**1993.03.14**

There are chocolates in his refrigerator from thirteen months ago. Only the store-bought ones—the handmade gifts spoiled. Or Hokuto ate them. For a Sumeragi, she'd been distinctly irreverent of certain rituals, like letting gifts go to whom they were given. Not that Seishirou particularly cared then, or cares now, but the thought is amusing.

He takes a gaudy heart-shaped box with him into his spells, department-store labeled and cellophane-wrapped and cold in his hand, and leaves it at the base of the tree. The to- and from- addresses are backwards now, but the names are all that matters, really. He smiles, courteously, cockily.

-

**1975.04.22**

The woman he's told is his mother is very physically beautiful. She has longer hair than any living person he's ever seen, and eyes that seem familiar, and probably a body under the kimono but Seishirou can't be certain, she just seems like yards and yards of cloth all gathered together. She smells like two different kinds of flowers, one fake and one real, and like paper, like fire, like dust.

He bows properly to her. _"Hajimemashite," _he says, _"okaasama._ Please look kindly upon me."

_"Hajimemashite,"_ she repeats, and she sounds nothing like she smells but that's _correct,_ "Seishirou."

—He'll strive for that smile. Not to get it, but to have it.

-

**1996.10.14**

It's almost like an opium den, he thinks. Baseball wouldn't have done well in opium dens. It's already hard enough to see the screen above the bar through all the smoke and hear through all the noise—which at this point is all groaning and shouting and deprecation. He can't imagine what it would be like to watch the game while under a more potent influence.

"Shit," the guy on the stool next to his says, thumping said stool with his heels and the bartop with his fist. "This rate the Swallows won't even _place._"

"They won't win two years in a row," Seishirou offers, and nudges his sunglasses up his nose. It blocks out the screen, but he closes his eye anyway. "And their roster is unimpressive."

The guy groans again, loudly, and the stool cushion groans with him. He's smoking St. Michels, has a decent ruddy lighter and uses it. Once Seishirou ends a drag of his own Mild Seven, it's about half gone, the smoke mingling with everyone else's, congregating around the top shelf where the ventilation system is.

"It doesn't matter," Seishirou adds, glancing sidelong around his shades on the only side he can.

The guy shrugs. "Yeah," he considers around a mouthful of smoke, "but it's something to live for."

"As good a reason as any," Seishirou says. Truly pathetic, he thinks.

-

**1997.08.08**

Subaru doesn't listen to music. Doesn't go to the movies. Doesn't dance. Doesn't drink. Doesn't read for pleasure. Of course he has no hobbies—no time for such things—but even the cursory decadences of culture are lost to him.

He does have the time, for those, but doesn't take it. He takes subways and cabs, but he sits in them silently, looking through people and scenery he'll never actually see. He takes long empty showers, and without Hokuto to turn him into an unassuming pop-fetish fashion plate he frets at the mirror for minutes, some mornings. He sleeps late, on occasion, or stares at the ceiling like a dead man, stretched out in a western-style bed like he's been tied to it. He masturbates, not often enough to remark on, but he does. He looks older when he does. Or he did, both times that Seishirou noticed.

It suits Subaru, looking older.

He did grow up to have exquisite hands. The pentagrams burn even redder when there's white to set them off. His cheeks flush the same, almost shameful color.

A familiar color, more than just scars. Seishirou watches, considers.

In a sense, by eschewing all the emptiness of what the world calls life, he's living just as pointlessly as the rest of them.

-

**1982.03.29**

The previous owner of this apartment left a fair amount behind. Convenience, courtesy, circumstance—it doesn't matter why, just that he did. _He,_ Seishirou guesses, because of the smell, the austerity, the uniform cleanliness of the walls. No nails for hanging pictures on, no reek of artificial beauty on the bathroom tile. But whoever _he_ was left an old electric rice cooker, a laundry basket, a few hand towels from the year of the Rooster, probably this past one, that are incongruously cheerful, a pencil-sharpener, and a chipped glass ashtray. Seishirou lifts that last thing off the kitchen counter. It's been emptied but not cleaned. It's not the kind of thing it's possible _to_ clean.

Seishirou slides it along the countertop, rests it next to the sink. It's fine here for now; once he's set up his desk, he'll move it there. He'll be a college student in two days, after all. He supposes he should look the part.

----

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End file.
